galnetfandomcom-20200216-history
Talk:Port II Blue Moon System, Blue Moon
Question "Approximately eight to twelve thousand takeoffs are handled with an average of 20 -25 take offs." This sentence needs time periods in order to make sense. Is it 8 to 12 thousand per day, per hour? and 20 to 25 per minute, second? (Note that 20 each minute would only be 1200 each hour, not 12000) SoronelHaetir (talk) 05:35, March 24, 2014 (UTC) 8-12,000 a year (20-25 a day) sorry Okay, though I would honestly expect one of the busiest ports in all of Union space to see greatly more traffic than than that. I would not have thought 20 to 25 per hour at all out of line for such a port. (Even 20 to 25 per minute would not have surprised me that much, given the immense size of the facility and how busy the port is supposed to be). As a comparison, the busiest passenger airport in the US is Hartsfield in Atlanta. According to Wikipedia it saw 950k flights in 2012 (using just three runways) - over 1.5 flights per minute. The busiest cargo airport is Memphis which had close to 260k flights a year using 4 runways. SoronelHaetir (talk) 14:11, March 24, 2014 (UTC) Blue Moon (the Moon) has 5 Class A space ports. There are no less than 45 Class A and 80 Class B Space Ports in the System. Main traffic goes in and out Blue Moon Hub. This is more akin to a sea port than an air port. Huge container ships are loaded unloaded in 2-3 days and that is fast (Fully mechanized) Does not really make much time difference if the crane is operated by a human or the container is lifted by a Cargo bot. A class A port has many bots and cargo drones. Handling the cargo , crews, supplies and fuels of 20-25 ships of Union Size. The common as dirt Meteor freighter is roughly an ellipsoid of 800 x 400 m Volume is :about 67,020,643 qm of it about 40,212,385 qm (60%) dedicated to freight. - and about 200,000 tons capacity (more or less what a real big sea going container ship today does) 200,000 x 20 a day = 40,000,000 tons a day 40000000 x 5 = 200,000,000 a day for Blue Moon (world) 200000000 = 9,000,000,000 tons a day for all 45 Class A if they only serve the average small freighter. That isn't counting the fuel , passengers, phys mail etc. Lets say a standard Union Freight container weighs = 100 tons 400,000 containers a day (40,000 containers per ship) 20,000 unload and 20,000 load If they load./ unload 1 container every 5 minutes = it takes them 5 days to load unload a ship. Thankfully they do it much faster and unload / load a little faster than Container terminals do it ( 5 container every min per ship) Regardless of crane or Robot or tractor beam - there is a mechanical limit how fast this can be done.So I think 20-25 ships a day is massive takes armies of robots, Longshore men,Fuel handlers etc. The Number I had my guys quote in the story only meant big TL ships. Not counting system traffic, space trains, space busses, trans matter tunnels etc. It's an orchestrated chaos of epic proportions every day around the clock... I am not criticizing your objection and I always welcome them, I just wanted to show you I don't just shake large / or small numbers out of thin air but I do think about it. Of course there is still a mountain of logical problems you will no doubt find that leave me no other choice but say, yep he's right. (And because of it my stories and our little Universe becomes a little more real ) So with that I say Thanks (again) VR I would say Port II not being at the true center of the insanity is the best of these objections. Given that the Devi was able to be re-stocked in 6 days or so I would certainly expect that even the biggest cargo ships would be able to have a much faster turn-around time. (Simply because I would expect cargo ships to be designed with the efficient loading and unloading of cargo as a major focus where the Devi was built with other concerns in mind). Sea going container vessels, for one (at least the operations I have seen) really only load from one side, they could go faster simply by building the wharf as a slip and loading from both sides rather than a pier that they Parrnell park against, but I suspect that would introduce lots of other problems so they don't. For one I would expect robot container handlers to be more like a conveyor belt than the typical gantry crane that can only handle one container at a time. Even if they are still picked from above I would expect the robot to have multiple picking elements operating in a continuous chain. (I would expect one robot to either be in loading or unloading mode only, but that is a different issue). A robot would be able to keep track of exactly where all the containers are far better than a human operator and thus there wouldn't need to be nearly the margin between moving containers. SoronelHaetir (talk) 17:22, March 24, 2014 (UTC) The Numbers I mentioned were just a thought model based on a freighther that is about equivalent to a ship of our times. A Gulliver freighter by numbers can take volume of of all Meteors of a days worth of lift offs.(And is still counted as one lift off) I like the methodical thinking and deeply enjoy our discussions. I tend to check at least every two hours or so to see if there is a new "Talk:... " posted. To pick up on my last post. 20 -25 lift offs on average doesn't mean these are all Meteors. Being one of the major traffic hubs of the Union. The volume and weight of a Planet needs to be shifted just to move the food consumed. If only 1/10th of a percent of Union travellers pass Blue Moon,,,,well you get the idea. I was not saying the ships are loaded with cranes. If you follow the material handling descriptions in my stories you will find mostly continuously operating material (and people) handling options. Slide belts can handle much more passengers than any floater, TMP, What I tried to do with the thought model is to use small ends to illustrate the immensity of a Space Port. Of course the one of the bussiest starsystem handles more freight ( Container tugs, even Tiny Tims are not uncommon here) But the real big ones are handled in specialized mooring and docking facilities. Ore and other bulk freight is handled at dedicated terminals. Fuel tankers and the like do not use the common landing fields. It,s the ones that carry individual logistics (Like a Fed Ex plane) or a produce freighter. Ore freighters, mineral freighters, ice etc does not have to be carried in presurized holds. But maybe I should not have generalized it which was,If I understood it correctly the core of your observation that 25 take offs for all ports would be not enough. In conclusion I think we found a good definition together in saying it holds true for Port II only. Thanks for not stopping to think! VR